Review 2258: This Other Eden

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This Other Eden is based on a true event, when the State of Maine evicted the entire mixed-race community of Malaga Island, people whose forefathers had lived there since the 18th century, and placed 11 of them in a home for the feeble-minded.

It’s no coincidence that a conference on Eugenics takes place just before the committee of the Governor’s Council of the State of Maine begins considering the fate of the occupants of Apple Island, a fate the occupants have no say in. It’s the turn of the 20th century, but Benjamin Honey arrived on the island in 1793 with his pockets full of apple seeds, bringing his wife Patience.

Now four small families live on the island, the Honeys, the McDermotts, the Proverbs, and the Larks, along with the abandoned Sockalexis children, all guilty only of being dirt poor and mixed race. They live by subsistence fishing and gathering the fruits of the forest. The winters are brutal. In the spring, the schoolteacher/preacher Matthew Diamond settles in his house across the bay and rows over daily to teach the children. The mainlanders consider the islanders inbred and sub-intelligent, but Matthew Diamond knows that Esther Honey, the matriarch, can recite Shakespeare from memory, that he has to teach himself algebra to stay ahead of Emily Sockalexis, that Tabitha Honey has a gift for Latin, and Ethan Honey is a talented artist.

The fate of the islanders is already decided when the Governor’s Council arrives and starts measuring their heads with calipers and asking them idiotic “intelligence” questions. Matthew Diamond decides to try to save Ethan, so he writes a letter to his friend Thomas Hale in Enon, Massachusetts, asking him to sponsor Ethan at an art school. Soon, Ethan leaves the island.

Harding’s writing is sometimes poetic, and he likes to pursue extended metaphors. Sometimes I liked this, and other times I didn’t have the patience for it. However, I found this novel less obscure than the other two of his I have read, touching, and ultimately with a more positive ending than was probably the case with the actual inhabitants of Malaga Island.

I read this book for my Booker Prize project.

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Review 2257: The Tenant

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I’ve given up or finished a few mystery series lately, so I thought I’d try the first Kørner and Werner series by Danish author Katrine Engberg.

An older man who lives in an apartment building in downtown Copenhagen is surprised to find the door open in his downstairs neighbors’ apartment, occupied by two young girls. When he tries to investigate, he falls over the body of one of the girls, Julie Stender, who has been gruesomely murdered.

For Detective Jeppe Kørner, this is his first important case since his breakdown after his divorce. To identify the victim, he and Anette Werner turn to Esther di Laurenti, the owner of the building who also resides there. She knows both the girls, but Julie was kind of a pet of hers. Esther has another young friend, Kristoff, her music teacher.

The police discover that Esther has been writing a murder mystery and she has used Julie as a model for the victim. Further, the murder is very much as described in the book. Only Esther and her writing group are supposed to have access to her draft.

I finished the book because I wanted to see how it came out, but what stood out almost immediately was the mediocre writing. When Engberg introduces each character, she tells a bunch of things about them, kind of a clumsy approach. Then there are lots of clichés, odd word choices, and inept metaphors. Part of this could be the translation, of course. One passage that I marked, a saying that Jeppa’s mother used, was “When you love someone, the callousness moves from your heart to the palms of your hands.” What does that even mean? Is callousness even the intended word?

As far as characterization goes, we learn a lot about Jeppa, but not so much about anyone else. In fact, I was taken aback by how over-the-top everyone was acting, with the police team snapping at each other all the time. It reminded me of the French mystery series Murder In that my husband and I have been watching, where I couldn’t decide whether everyone was overacting or they were just being French. (Just kidding. I have lots of French friends.)

Finally, the payoff was supposed to be weird, but it also seemed completely unlikely. I don’t think I’ll continue this series.

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Review 2256: He Who Whispers

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I was going to schedule this review for November, but this novel was at times so exciting and with a plot point so appropriate for the season that I had to move it to October.

Miles Hammond thinks of a meeting of the Murder Club for the first time in five years as another indication that life is returning to normal after the war. He is not a member, but he has been invited by his friend Gideon Fell. However, when he arrives for the meeting, only the speaker, Professor Rigaud, a woman named Barbara Morrell, and himself are there.

The three decide to hold the Murder Club anyway, so Professor Rigaud tells the story of an unsolved French case, in which Howard Brooke was murdered at the top of a tower that no one else had entered. Implicated in the crime but found not guilty was the fiancée of Brooke’s son Harry, Fay Seton. A verdict of suicide was found, but no one could account for a missing briefcase that Brooke took up to the top of the tower.

Miles has recently inherited his uncle’s estate, including an extensive library. The next day he has an appointment to hire a librarian, and to his surprise, the applicant turns out to be Fay Seton. He hires her and they travel to his house in the New Forest.

Miles and Miss Morrell did not hear all of Professor Rigaud’s presentation, because it was interrupted, so Miles does not know that before the murder, a whispering campaign accused Fay of infidelity and vampirism. But during the next night, something terrifies Miles’s sister so much that she is almost scared to death. And Gideon Fell and Professor Rigaud are already on their way there, because the inhabitants are in danger.

This attack on Miles’s sister leads them all to re-examine the original case. How was Howard Brooke murdered when no one else was on the tower? Is Fay Seton a murderer or has her past somehow followed her to the New Forest?

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2255: Introduction to Sally

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Ever since Sally Pinner was very young, her parents have tried to keep her isolated. That’s because, although she is obedient and good, she is the most beautiful creature anyone has ever seen. Crowds gather when she goes out, and Mr. Pinner views the extra profit he makes when she helps him in his small grocery store as dishonest.

After his wife dies, Mr. Pinner is at his wit’s end trying to protect her in London, so he swaps stores with a man who lives in the middle of nowhere. This plan seems to work very well at first, most of their neighbors being widows and spinsters, but Mr. Pinner gets a shock after Christmas. He lives only ten miles from Cambridge. Term has been out, but as soon as it starts, the village fills up with young men.

Jocelyn Luke, a young man with a promising future in the sciences, spots Sally and immediately loses his head. He decides to marry her, throw up his university career, and go work in London as a writer. When Mr. Pinner hears the word “marry,” he hastily agrees, because other men have wanted something from her, but it wasn’t marriage. Soon poor Sally finds herself married to a stranger, who quickly realizes that her accent and her way of expressing herself are not going to impress his mother. So, he begins trying to get her to say her h’s. Everyone she meets has plans for Sally, but no one bothers to ask her what she wants.

This novel is played mostly for laughs, but it has some serious messages about the treatment of women and people’s view of women. A Pygmalion-like story where the girl to be transformed has no aptitude for change turns that idea on its head. Chaos ensues.

I received this book from the publisher in exchange for a free and fair review.

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Review 2254: #1962 Club! The Reivers

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The Reivers is William Faulkner’s last novel, written in 1962, which I chose as my last selection for the 1962 Club. Unlike some of his more famous novels, it is told straightforwardly by its main character, Lucius Priest, as a grandfather telling a yarn about his childhood to his grandson. I believe Faulkner wrote this novel, which reminded me of Huck Finn, for pure fun.

Key to the story, which is set in 1904 when Lucius is 11, is Boon Hoggenbeck, an overgrown man-child who works for Lucius’s grandfather, referred to as Boss. Lucius’s grandparents and parents have no sooner departed for the funeral of Lucius’s other grandfather than Boon decides to take Boss’s brand new automobile and Lucius to Memphis, both sort of colluding in this misbehavior without actually discussing it. On the way there, they discover that Ned, Boss’s Black coachman, has hitched a ride with them by hiding under a tarpaulin.

In these early days of cars in Mississippi, the trip to Memphis is in itself an adventure, but things heat up when Boon delivers himself and Lucius to a whorehouse (although Lucius calls it a boarding house) where Boon has a favorite girl, Miss Corrie.

A bunch of colorful characters appear, including Otis, a boy described as having something wrong and who you don’t notice until it’s almost too late. But the story really kicks in when the miscreants learn that Ned has traded Boss’s automobile for a horse that he plans to race against another horse that already beat it twice.

I wasn’t sure this was going to be my kind of story, but mindful of the time (it is definitely not politically correct in so many ways), and I mean 1904 not 1962, it is funny and contains some philosophizing about right and wrong.

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Review 2253: #1962 Club! The Pumpkin Eater

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I chose The Pumpkin Eater for the 1962 Club because the title seemed vaguely familiar (aside from its nursery rhyme connections) and because I don’t think I’ve read any Penelope Mortimer. I think the title is familiar because there was a reasonably popular movie of it in 1964 starring Anne Bancroft.

The unnamed narrator is a wife and mother of a large number of children, the number, names, and ages (except one) never specified. At a young age, she was already married three times, once a widow, and already had quite a few children, including three stepchildren whose father died. As the novel opens, she is recounting a discussion with her father to her psychiatrist, in which her father is trying to dissuade Jake from marrying her, basically saying she is too flaky and has too many children.

As she goes on to tell the story of her marriage, nothing improves. Her psychiatrist thinks her desire to have more children is a pathology (and also entirely her responsibility). Both her psychiatrist and her doctor are disdainful and condescending to her. Nothing seems to be thought of her husband having affairs (although she naïvely believes he is faithful for quite some time despite an early incident with a girl named Philpot).

The fact is, Jake, a screenwriter, is gone on set most of the time, most of their friends are his, the family is wealthy enough to have servants, and even the children are absorbed by nurses early and by schools later. So, she has little to occupy herself with except small children and cooking.

This book is billed as black humor. I didn’t find it funny, but I did sympathize with the narrator. Some horrendous things are done to her, and all of the men around her are manipulative. I thought the novel was bleak rather than funny.

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Review 2252: #1962 Club! A Murder of Quality

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The second book I chose for the 1962 Club is A Murder of Quality, the second George Smiley novel. I found it surprising because all the other George Smiley novels I’ve read have been espionage novels, and this one is a straight mystery.

George Smiley is retired when he is summoned by his old colleague, Miss Brimley, now the editor of a Christian magazine. She tells Smiley she would like him to investigate a letter the magazine received from Mrs. Rode, whose family are great supporters of the magazine. In the letter, Mrs. Rode claims her husband is trying to kill her. Smiley agrees to look into it, but the next day they learn that Mrs. Rode has been brutally murdered.

Mr. Rode is a tutor at a prestigious boys’ school, Carne, with a high church atmosphere. Smiley attends Mrs. Rode’s funeral pretending to be a journalist from the magazine. He finds out that though both Rodes belonged to a Baptist chapel when they arrived, Mr. Rode has converted to the English church and has been trying to fit in with the school staff, while Mrs. Rode did not. Mrs. Rode appears to have been deeply involved in chapel charitable activities.

The police are searching for a homeless woman named Jane. When Smiley goes to look at the crime scene, he meets Jane, who tells him she saw the devil fly away on silver wings.

The solution to the murder relies heavily on Smiley’s ability to understand his suspects’ characters. The novel is an interesting character study and a plunge into the school’s secrets.

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Review 2251: #1962 Club! We Have Always Lived in the Castle

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Twice a year, Simon of Stuck in a Book and Kaggsy of Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings sponsor a Read the Year club, for which they randomly pick a year in the first three-quarters of the 20th century, and participants select books published during that year to read. This time, the year is 1962, and We Have Always Lived in the Castle is my first selection for the club.

However, as usual, I have already posted reviews for three other books published in 1962:

We Have Always Lived in the Castle is a true modern gothic novel (or maybe novella—it’s very short), moving gradually but compellingly to reveal its secrets. Mary Catherine Blackwood lives with her sister Constance and their Uncle Julian in the family home, isolated from the rest of the village. We first meet Mary Catherine on one of her biweekly trips to the village for food, where she carefully plots her course to try to avoid people. However, she is mocked by the villagers, both young and old.

Slowly, we learn the first secret—that six years ago when Mary Catherine was twelve, most of her family was poisoned. Mary Catherine survived because she had been sent to bed without supper, Constance because she seldom used sugar, which had arsenic in it; Uncle Julian ate very little, so he survived but has since been feeble and muddled. Constance was tried for the crime but found not guilty. Ever since then, the girls have avoided other people.

Mary Catherine’s narrative hints that things are going to change. First, Helen Clarke arrives for tea, as she does once a week, but she brings along a friend, and Constance seems to be responding to her suggestion that she get out more. Mary Catherine worries about this, for she is very protective of Constance. Then Cousin Charles arrives. Naïve Constance accepts him, but Mary Catherine thinks he’s a bad one.

Mary Catherine is a dreamy girl who has strange compulsions and rituals, but one by one, Charles dismantles her protections around their property. We can see that the sisters are soon to be shaken from their oddly comfortable existence.

Jackson was a master at evoking an atmosphere. I think only her The Haunting of Hill House surpasses this one in power.

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Review 2250: The Wheel Spins

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The Wheel Spins is the novel upon which the many versions of the movie The Lady Vanishes are based. Although I am familiar with the story in all its incarnations, I still found the book exciting.

Iris Carr is on holiday with a group of her friends in a Balkan country, possibly Romania. Rich and spoiled, the friends have been cheerfully disrupting their small hotel, leading the other English guests to dislike them. The last day, she finds she is tired of them herself, so she decides to stay a day longer than the others. When she does leave, she has a touch of sunstroke and has to be helped. The train is crowded, so the porter crams her into a compartment for six as the seventh person.

In the compartment are a commanding woman in black who turns out to be a baroness, a family of three, a cold blonde lady, and a nondescript middle-aged woman in tweeds. Iris isn’t feeling well because of her sunstroke, but the nondescript woman turns out to be English, Miss Froy, and takes her to the dining car for lunch. There she prattles about returning to England to her elderly parents and dog, her job as governess for the baroness, and her next job for the baron’s political opponent.

Back in the train compartment, Iris falls asleep. When she wakes up, Miss Froy is gone. When she doesn’t appear, Iris searches the train for her, but she doesn’t seem to be on it. In growing alarm, she finds her compartment companions denying that Miss Froy ever was there. On her way to the dining room, Miss Froy met some of the English people from the hotel, but when Iris speaks to them, some have not seen her and others lie for their own reasons. So, even though a young man named Hare and the professor with him try to help her, Hare believes she has hallucinated because of her sun stroke, and the professor thinks she is hysterical.

As the train nears Trieste, Iris begins to fear Miss Froy is in danger, but what can she do about it? This all makes an thrilling novel.

Missing from the movie adaptations are passages that visit Miss Froy’s elderly parents and dog as they await her coming. In a way, they are unnecessary, but they make the ending much more touching, especially the dog.

I received this novel from the publishers in exchange for a free and fair review.

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